Page 3 of Kenan's Mate
Large, dark purple eyes stare down at me.
Inhuman eyes.
I can’t look away, and though my brain screams I should fight and run away from this strange creature who’s carrying me, I’m too paralyzed by fear to even push at his chest. His nostrils flare and a thick vein in his neck bulges.
He’s absolutely terrifying.
Details of the brief attack come racing back. The five sleek gray ships with flashing blue and green lights. The beams of white shooting from those strange ships. TheStargazerbeing impacted by weapons’ fire and smoke blanketing the air. Fearing for my life.
Realization crashes over me in an icy wave of horror.
TheStargazerwas attacked by aliens. Honest to God aliens. I scramble to make sense of it all. Do Earth governments already know of these beings? Or is today’s attack literally first contact? Why did the aliens attack us?
Before I can process today’s events further, black dots dance in my vision.
Fuck, not again. Stay awake.
But I can’t. Not fully. I’m falling under. Deep, deep, and deeper still. Fatigue and dizziness force my eyes shut, and I once again tumble into darkness.
Rumbling voices occasionally punctuate the void I’m floating in. Images from my childhood keep flashing, too, like little pieces of broken dreams. Because only the sad times visit me, and, when I try to conjure up the happy moments—which make up most of my childhood—I start sinking, as if caught in quicksand, and my lungs seize up.
The images flash and flash.
A tour bus crashes into the small red car driving ahead of us, pushing the car underneath a passing tractor trailer. My mother screams. My grandmother is in the car now beneath the tractor trailer. Oh my God, we know she’s dead.
Rain is pounding on the roof. The doorbell rings as I’m doing homework at the kitchen table. My father lets two police officers inside. They say my brother was found dead in an alley. Stab wounds. Probably drug related. There’s a funeral. My mother cries for weeks and weeks.
I stand above the trash can in the kitchen, staring at the remnants of my acceptance letter into the prestigious arts high school. I got in! But why did someone rip up my acceptance letter? I run to my room and slam the door. Drawings and paintings that I’d joyfully made over the years, most of them depictions of Tallia, cover my walls and taunt me. The next day, my parents announce I need to take more advanced science and math classes, if I want to make something of my life. I know it’s because my brother was an artist. They don’t want me to follow in his footsteps. They don’t want to lose me too.
A scream rips from my throat. Strong hands hold me down. I don’t like these dreams. Shouts reach me, making me go still. An argument, two distinct voices, rise above the din of my most painful memories.
Panic races through me, knowing there’s more than one of these purple-eyed creatures. Unless, of course, all of this, including the attack on theStargazer, is nothing but a dream.
I pray everything that’s happened since my arrival on the other side of the wormhole is but a nightmare. Then all the sounds and images fade to black, and I drift in a sea of nothingness.
Chapter Three
When I awake, my surroundings confirm I haven’t been dreaming. I feel as if days have gone by since I last passed out in the purple-eyed alien’s arms. Of course, I have no way of knowing how long I’ve been sleeping.
It’s not the indeterminable amount of time that’s passed troubling me, though. It’s the fact that I’m inside a cage with metal bars, and the cage sits in a large bedroom at the foot of a bed twice as big as the king-size version in my lavish quarters aboard theStargazer.
A large mug of water has been left for me in a corner of the cage. It’s cold and refreshing and mercifully eases the dryness in my throat. After I finish drinking it, I place the mug outside the bars and resume waiting for whatever’s to happen next. I comfort myself with the fact that if someone gave me water, they at least want to keep me alive. For now.
Tears trickle down my face and I hug my legs to my chest.
God, please don’t let this be real.
Not only am I in a cage, but I’m naked. I wonder if the same alien who’d been carrying me earlier lives in this house. But, then, what does it matter?
I am someone’s prisoner.
An alien’s prisoner.
Disbelief envelops me in a cold sheath, while a part of me remains completely numb and detached from this experience. I spend several moments pretending I’m not here, pretending I’m anywhere but inside this cage on a planet far from Earth.
Birds chirp outside a nearby open window, drawing me back into my surroundings and the urgency of my situation. Exotic scents enter with the warm breeze drifting inside, a mix of jasmine, soil, salty air, coconut, and whitewood. Forest meets sea, I thought. From my place in the cage, I spy green trees with massive, thick oval leaves against a backdrop of vivid blue. When I close my eyes and listen, I think I hear the steady, lulling crash of waves upon a shore.
Perhaps I’m near an ocean or one of the many large lakes on Tallia.
